New technology could enable people to talk to their mobiles silently, the BBC reports.
Visitors to the Cebit electronics fair in Germany have been shown a prototype that measures tiny electrical signals produced by the muscles. The signals can be recorded and turned into synthesised speech even if a single word is not said out loud.
While it’s unlikely to hit the mass markets anytime soon, the new technology holds some interesting opportunities.
Tanja Shultz, professor of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, pointed out that it could be used, for example, to help people that have lost their voice or as a translation tool.
She said: “You could speak in your mother tongue and the text could be translated into another language.”
YouTube to add captions to its videos
The Google-owned online video giant Youtube is also experimenting with interesting technology. Tens of millions of YouTube videos are to have captions added to them using automated speech recognition technology.
Initially, the service will cover videos that are in English, but more languages will be added in the coming months.
The technology is said to have been around for decades, but has finally become good enough for a large scale implementation. However, the company stresses that the project is still in the experimental stage and far from perfect.
Vic Gundotra, Google executive, said: “It is not a complete solution but it is a step on the way to the real solution. It’s difficult to get every word exactly right but sometimes that doesn’t matter and other times it’s amusing.”
The project has been welcomed with largely positive feedback as it makes the huge online video content more accessible for the deaf.
Ken Harrenstien, a software engineer working on the project, has been deaf since he was a child.
He said: “This is huge. It is what I have dreamt about for so many years. The fact that you can now go on to any video online and expect to see captions is unbelievable and the fact I had a part in this is great.”
Tags: Digital, new technology, youtube
Posted in News Roundup